EFSA 15th scientific colloquium: Emerging risks in food - from identification to communication

The increasing complexity of our food and feed production systems, the globalisation of trade, major environmental challenges, and the introduction of novel foods and of new food processing technologies may give rise to new risks in the food chain. As a consequence, decision-makers are now becoming increasingly aware of the importance of having robust systems in place to identify risks at their early inception. According to current EU Regulations on Food Safety, EFSA is mandated to “undertake action to identify and characterise emerging risks”, and in 2008 EFSA established, for this purpose, a dedicated unit on emerging risks. In October 2010, over 100 international experts from 29 countries gathered in Parma at the Colloquium on “Emerging Risks in Food - from Identification to Communication”, for an open scientific debate on four main topics related to emerging risks, namely: (i) available methods to identify new hazards and/or exposures and assess emerging risks; (ii) strategic sources of information for data collection; (iii) identification of drivers of change as underlying causes of emerging risks; (iv) opportunities for the establishment of an international network to communicate on emerging risks to risk managers and policy makers. The outcome of this discussion provides practical inputs for developing of a European framework for emerging risks identification.